Zionism

Two Kinds of Domestic Violence

Below the fold, I quote from a fascinating
interview with John Gottman
in which he describes two kinds of domestic violence, or more exactly, two distinct
types of spousal abuse (HT: Marilyn Johnson).

Many people know that John Gottman is a
world-renowned family psychologist. Not everyone knows that Gottman is an RK
(rabbi’s kid) – in a previous
post, I noted that Vincent van Gogh was a PK (pastor’s kid). Gottman is the
son of an Orthodox rabbi from Vienna. His parents, who met at a Zionist
organization, escaped Europe in 1940. Gottman was born in the Dominican
Republic and attended a Lubavitcher yeshiva in Brooklyn for elementary school. Today
he identifies as a Conservative Jew, keeps kosher and keeps Shabbat.

John Gottman talks about two kinds of violence
in marriage:

"We've reconstructed it from what we
have learned by talking to people about it, and it does seem that there are two
very distinct forms of violence. One form is where the conflict escalates, and
people somehow lose control. They get to a point where the trigger seems to be
feeling disrespected and there's a loss to their dignity. They feel driven to defend
that dignity, and start doing things like posturing and threatening while in a
state of high and diffuse physiological arousal, and they increasingly have a
loss of control. The violence tends to be symmetrical, and there is not a clear
victim and perpetrator."

This kind of violence is often described at
length in marriage books designed to help couples overcome destructive patterns
characterized by escalation and loss of control. For example, Emerson Eggerichs treats this kind of
violence, which even “good-willed” spouses are easily caught up in, in his
best-selling Love
& Respect.

Gottman continues:

"Another kind of violence, which is very
different, is where one person in the relationship is using violence to control
and intimidate the other person and is very much not physiologically aroused,
very much in control and trying to do something to the other person that alters
their idea of reality. There is a perpetrator and a victim here, The late Neil Jacobsen
and I have called this kind of mind control "gaslighting," after the movie
with Ingrid Bergman. I'd like to understand those two kinds of violence. I
think the first one is treatable, particularly early, by looking at the couple
relationship and changing the relationship. It may be even treatable later on,
by slowing things down enough and physiological arousal has a place in it. The
second type of violence is more elusive at the moment, although some initial experiments
that I and Julia Babcock and her students have designed show promising
proximal, that is, short term effects with these perpetrators."

It is important to distinguish between
domestic violence whose perpetrator is an evil-willed abuser dedicated to
coercive control, and the vanilla-flavored mutual variety of mistreatment referred to
previously.

Gottman self-identifies
as an egalitarian. Even so, he is big on gender differences. Gender
differences, of course, are not absolute, but that does not make them less
important. Many egalitarians are at a loss when asked to identify typical
gender differences which are important to take into account in the pursuit of
healthy marriages. If Gottman is right, it is important that advice for
husbands and wives not be symmetrical but rather, gender-nuanced – a baseline
point of departure in Eggerichs’ Love & Respect.

Gottman notes in the interview:

"Because men are different. Men have a
lot of trouble when they reach a state of vigilance, when they think there's
real danger, they have a lot of trouble calming down. and there's probably an
evolutionary history to that. Because it functioned very well for our hominid
ancestors, anthropologists think, for men to stay physiologically aroused and vigilant,
in cooperative hunting and protecting the tribe, which was a role that males
had very early in our evolutionary history. Whereas women had the opposite sort
of role, in terms of survival of the species, those women reproduced more
effectively who had the milk-let-down reflex, which only happens when oxytocin
is secreted in the brain, it only happens when women - as any woman knows who's
been breast-feeding, you have to be able to calm down and relax. But oxytocin is
also the hormone of affiliation. So women have developed this sort of social
order, caring for one another, helping one another, and affiliating, that also
allows them to really calm down and have the milk let-down reflex. And so -
it's one of nature's jokes. Women can calm down, men can't; they stay aroused
and vigilant."

Believing is KnowingComments on things like prophecy, predestination, and reward and punishment from an orthodox Jewish perspective, by David Guttmann

Ben Byerly's Blogthoughts on the Bible, Africa, Kenya, aid, and social justice, by Ben Byerly, a PhD candidate at Africa International University (AIU), in Nairobi, Kenya working on “The Hopes of Israel and the Ends of Acts” (Luke’s narrative defense of Paul to Diaspora Judeans in Acts 16-20)

C. OrthodoxyChristian, Contemporary, Conscientious… or Just Confused, by Ken Brown, a very thoughtful blog (archive). Ken is currently a Dr. Theol. student at Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, part of The Sofja-Kovalevskaja Research Group studying early Jewish Monotheism. His dissertation will focus on the presentation of God in Job.

Catholic Biblesa thoughtful blog about Bible translations by Timothy, who has a degree in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome (Angelicum) and teaches theology in a Catholic high school in Michigan

Chrisendomirreverent blog with a focus on the New Testament, by Chris Tilling, New Testament Tutor for St Mellitus College and St Paul's Theological Centre, London

Claude Mariottinia perspective on the Old Testament and current events by a professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Chicagoland, Illinois

Codex: Biblical Studies Blogspotby Tyler Williams, a scholar of the Hebrew Bible and cognate literature, now Assistant Professor of Theology at The King's University College in Edmonton, Alberta (archive)

Colours of Scripturereflections on theology, philosophy, and literature, by Benjamin Smith, afflicted with scriptural synaesthesia, and located in London, England

ComplegalitarianA team blog that discusses right ways and wrong ways Scripture might help in the social construction of gender (old archive only; more recent archive, unfortunately, no longer publicly available)

Connected Christianitya place to explore what it might be like if Christians finally got the head, heart, and hands of their faith re-connected (archive)

Conversational TheologySmart and delightful comment by Ros Clarke, a Ph.D. student at the University of the Highlands and Islands, at the (virtual) Highland Theological College (archive)

Daily HebrewFor students of biblical Hebrew and the ancient Near East, by Chip Hardy, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago

Daniel O. McClellana fine blog by the same, who is pursuing a master of arts degree in biblical studies at Trinity Western University just outside of Vancouver, BC.

Davar AkherLooking for alternative explanations: comments on things Jewish and beyond, by Simon Holloway, a PhD student in Classical Hebrew and Biblical Studies at The University of Sydney, Australia

Evedyahuexcellent comment by Cristian Rata, Lecturer in Old Testament of Torch Trinity Graduate School of Theology, Seoul, Korea

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Lingamishdelightful fare by David Ker, Bible translator, who also lingalilngas.

old testament passionGreat stuff from Anthony Loke, a Methodist pastor and Old Testament lecturer in the Seminari Theoloji, Malaysia

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha BlogA weblog created for a course on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, by James Davila (archive)

On the Main LineMississippi Fred MacDowell's musings on Hebraica and Judaica. With a name like that you can't go wrong.

p.ost an evangelical theology for the age to comeseeking to retell the biblical story in the difficult transition from the centre to the margins following the collapse of Western Christendom, by Andrew Perriman, independent New Testament scholar, currently located in Dubai

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Serving the Wordincisive comment on the Hebrew Bible and related ancient matters, with special attention to problems of philology and linguistic anthropology, by Seth L. Sanders, Assistant Professor in the Religion Department of Trinity College, Hartford, CT

Targumanon biblical and rabbinic literature, Christian theology, gadgetry, photography, and the odd comic, by Christian Brady, associate professor of ancient Hebrew and Jewish literature and dean of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State

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